I recently took part in a customer advisory board meeting with leaders from the Oil/Gas and Energy/Utilities industries, where we discussed the trends and challenges regarding technology adoption and the impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on the industry.
Martin Uczen, Director of Corporate Strategy, Energy & Utilities, Verizon
Consistent with Verizon Enterprise Solutions Tech Trends for 2015 predictions, the executives unanimously agreed that IoT is gaining momentum. Furthermore, they concluded that IoT is no longer a “do it alone” activity, since there is too much at stake from both a value creation standpoint and from an investment risk perspective.
While many technologies were discussed during the meeting, two challenges related to IoT stood out — network reliability and cybersecurity.
Network reliability is a valid concern especially considering the exponential growth in machine to machine connections, which is estimated to be upwards of 50 billion connections by 2020, according to Ericsson. The communication network underpins all IoT activity, making network planning and long-range strategy a key issue for these firms. As we head into an IoT-enabled 21st century, Verizon is working in tandem with our clients to develop a more agile and scalable foundation that will adapt to the growing demands of device connectivity and data, without compromising performance.
Cybersecurity was another hot topic but with an industry-specific twist. The board members agreed that network and security design are inseparable. Therefore, a multi-layered security approach is necessary to establish management policies from device to device to humans across the network.
The firms represented at the board meeting have already invested billions in their existing communications networks and it would be imprudent to think that they must start from scratch to develop their IoT-capable networks. In fact, the conversation focused on using IoT investments to proactively enhance operational security through sensor proliferation and data analysis. For instance, data can be collected from devices and analyzed for pattern recognition to identify anomalies such as physical or cyber intrusion. Also, video capabilities in the field, coupled with cloud-based applications, can support manual inspections for early failure or fortify security perimeters.
It is also abundantly clear that IoT is no longer considered a fad or something being “worked on” by a small subset of engineers within these firms — it’s now an executive-level conversation. IoT is being viewed as more than just optimization around the edges, but as a critical aspect of competitive strategies going forward.
Visit Verizon Enterprise Solutions to learn more about the technology trends that will drive innovation in 2015.
